In rail, the impacts of systemic risks can be disproportionate to their triggering events. With intersections across transport, power, and cyber systems, even minor setbacks to the network can be felt across operational and geographical boundaries. The result can be service disruptions, safety incidents, and economic losses – sometimes with legal or regulatory consequences.
Magnus Moglia, an Associate Professor at La Trobe University’s Climate Change Adaptation Lab, says that with events, like adverse weather, on the rise, it is vital rail operators use sophisticated methods to expose latent weaknesses.
“Today’s hazards can overwhelm traditional risk management approaches,” he said. “These models are sometimes not cut out for understanding certain widespread and systemic effects that adverse weather events can have on infrastructure, operations, and people.”
Moglia says one emerging technique is to view systemic risk through four layers – an approach he adapted from research by Westra and Zscheischler (2023).
He says this trumps the traditional approach to risk management, in which hazards are primarily considered in terms of their immediate physical impacts.
First wave – system dynamics / cybernetic models
The first layer of systemic risk analysis considers the interactions between objects, using a ‘system dynamics’ or ‘cybernetics’ approach.
Climate risks are viewed both in terms of their direct impact on people, infrastructure, or businesses, as well as their immediate flow on effects.
For example, a disruption to the freight network might be viewed as a blight on farmers, who rely on the network to distribute produce, and, secondarily, to the community who rely on that produce for their diet.
Moglia said this first wave exposes flaws in the traditional approach, particularly when calculating the GDP impacts of adverse events.
“If you estimate the impact of climate change on GDP under a traditional risk management approach – and there is a known relationship of how that would impact economic productivity based on previous disasters – you start to see inadequacies in the traditional method,” he said.
“For example, if you try to measure the impact of climate change one country individually without considering flow on effects, you arrive at something like a 3 to 4 percent loss in GDP, which doesn’t sound very much.
“But if you take into account that all global supply chains are connected – and that climate change is felt everywhere – then you arrive at an effect of around 40 percent of the GDP, which is very significant.”
Second wave – pluralism of perspectives
The next level of risk analysis involves an exploration of diverse values and knowledge as well as boundary critique, Moglia said.
“This is about listening to and embracing other peoples’ perspectives and values. As risks percolate from one domain to another, embracing alternative perspectives will help identify all relevant vulnerabilities.”
An example of this approach in rail is seeking to understand the impacts of freight service disruptions to agricultural communities. Alternative freight options may be expensive, challenging or unviable.
“Say you have regular freight line closures – how might this impact farmers who rely on trains for moving grains to port for exports, and what might be the long term implications for the resilience of local communities?” Moglia said.
Third wave – imagination and blind spots
The third wave is around scenario planning, imagination, and identifying blind spots. Moglia said it is vital for exploring risks with unknown potential, where historic data is either unavailable or unapplicable.
“This sort of systemic risk is often poorly known because it has not been experienced before, and its impacts are not necessarily intuitive.
“For example, what would happen you have an extreme heat wave, with rail carriages breaking down in a remote area, with no access to internet or phones. In these cases, imagination is required to understand how events may unfold,” Moglia said.
Moglia said a traditional risk management approach would not suffice with this type of risk and could miss vital implications.
“As we have seen in the past, particularly with so called Black Swan events like the COVID-19 pandemic, there can be far broader and long-lasting ramifications from events that we hadn’t considered.
“With events like the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw that a relatively straightforward and localised risk deterred people from using a transport modality, worldwide, and the impacts lingered as new practices like working from home became entrenched.
“We know this with hindsight, but few predicted it at the outset. Human behaviour is difficult to predict and interacts with messy realities. In those cases, scenario planning can help provide important insights about risks.
“This third wave of systems thinking allows for uncovering blind spots, and mentally preparing for challenging situations, and should be encouraged in today’s threat landscape,” he argued.
Further insight
Beyond, this, as a fourth wave of systemic risk exploration, Moglia also suggests that ongoing learning and reflection is essential for managing complex risks.
“It’s not a set and forget type of exercise, but an ongoing activity,” he said.
Sharing more on this, Magnus Moglia will present at the upcoming Rail Decarbonisation and Resilience Conference, held 22-23 July 2025.
This year’s event will explore how industry is using sustainable infrastructure and technology to handle future threats, with a focus on climate-adaptive design, cyber resilience, and emergency response. Solutions like clean traction power, alternate fuels, and energy-efficient operations will also be discussed.
Learn more and register your tickets here.
About Magnus Moglia
Magnus is an Associate Professor in Sustainability Science at La Trobe University’s Climate Change Adaptation Lab.
He has spent the last 25 years researching infrastructure risk management, sustainable urban water management, future scenarios for cities, the circular economy, and transport decarbonisation. More recently, he has explored decarbonisation in the freight sector, nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation, and systemic climate risks.
Magnus is Editor-in-Chief for the Current Research in Environmental Sustainability journal and Chair for the Regen Melbourne Research Council.
He has published more than 90 journal articles, numerous research reports and book chapters. Recently he co-edited the book Future Cities Making: Missions Oriented Research for Sustainability Transitions in Australia.